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If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

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Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#241

Post by Wildgoose »

ben_w wrote: post #222
pjc50 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody calls alcohol duty “micromanagement”. They don't, but it really is! There's different rates for different specific gravity and different processes. Re: petrol, I note that the UK government is trying to replace this as part of the EV transition with a milage tax, which is proving controversial and fiddly. Energy tax is a hugely fraught political issue. The "poster child" for cheap energy is a little old lady…

> I think I'd favor a "personal allowance" model similar to income tax, where you get the first X units of energy tax free and then have to pay VAT, carbon taxes etc. on the rest of it. I can see why this is tempting, but I think there's a better way to legislate with this, especially with that poster child. I'm a landlord of a flat. I used to live in it before I left the UK. The EPC rating is D, so despite the doubl…

The current minimum EPC rating is D. The legislation to raise it to C hasn't been dropped, they just haven't decided exactly what date it will take place. And it's stupid legislation because many old properties cannot be sensibly raised from D to C, and these are the properties (e.g. terraced housing) which are typically rented out. So, we have a housing crisis with too few properties available to rent and the legislation will force landlords to take rental property off the market. Madness.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#242

Post by mikkupikku »

Brogrammers just now realizing that new technology often eliminates jobs, but think this is the first time in history this has happened because this time it's happening to them.

Automatic thread spinning machines took the jobs of spinsters. Did the machines themselves pay taxes?

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#243

Post by cubefox »

epolanski wrote: post #172

Interesting how this argument is only popping now that technology is threatening white collar workers. Automation has been shoving blue collars out of the job market for a century. A single farmer can do with his machinery today what took a dozen of people just 50 years ago. Manufacturing has been super automated long ago. Even in commerce automated checkout has been replacing workers for more than a decade. In any c…

It's dangerous but not pointless. If we get human mass unemployment, someone has to pay for them, and if the companies offering the AI sit in the US, most countries won't be able tax OpenAI & Co directly.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#244

Post by veunes »

doener wrote: post #184

No, not the AI. Just the owner of means of production like AI. The fact that capital owners successfully avoid contributing to the financing of our states and social systems is, in my view, one of the fundamental problems of our time.

If AI really is just another capital amplifier, then the problem isn't new, AI just makes the existing imbalance harder to ignore

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#245

Post by worthless-trash »

aianus wrote: post #81
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you still feel you arent losing when your job is gone and thus your income and woops there goes your home because you cant afford your rent/mortgage anymore.

Rent/mortgage would be dirt cheap if you didn't have to live near a job.

Boy I wish I lived in your reality.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#246

Post by mlrtime »

dns_snek wrote: post #221

It feels really alien to discuss this in terms of "taxing AI", like an economic abstraction completely breaking down. Ultimately when you take automation to its logical conclusion we have people with needs and we have machines and automation capable of meeting those needs with minimal human labor. No matter how you try to resolve this economically, it should hold that if something can be produced with minimal human l…

Transition periods are always difficult, but they've always reached some equilibrium. Right now the spread between the two seem higher (not sure they are) but the system will bring them closer together.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#247

Post by mlrtime »

epolanski wrote: post #172

Interesting how this argument is only popping now that technology is threatening white collar workers. Automation has been shoving blue collars out of the job market for a century. A single farmer can do with his machinery today what took a dozen of people just 50 years ago. Manufacturing has been super automated long ago. Even in commerce automated checkout has been replacing workers for more than a decade. In any c…

What makes you think this argument is popping? Or that it's only being discussed now, because of 1 article on a domain I've never heard of?

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#248

Post by cubefox »

BrenBarn wrote: post #44

Why not just tax wealth at steeply progressive rates? If the robots result in increased wealth inequality, a wealth tax will counteract that. If not, then it means the introduction of robots led to more broadly-based benefits. Either way, I'm so sick and tired of people talking about the effect on GDP. GDP is a terrible way to measure anything remotely meaningful. GDP has gone up and up and things have gotten worse a…

> Why not just tax wealth at steeply progressive rates? If the robots result in increased wealth inequality, a wealth tax will counteract that.

It has been tried. Wealth tax means rich people (who already pay most of the taxes) are leaving the country, then the state gets fewer taxes, not more.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#249

Post by ozmodiar »

dns_snek wrote: post #224
ivape wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t ask someone to pay taxes if they have a bigger, cheaper army.

I wouldn't discount the collective power and ingenuity of a few billion oppressed people.

Looking back at the degrading lives commoners have suffered throughout a lot of human history, I'm pretty split. And that was before rulers had AI and autonomous defenses to keep everyone in line. Frankly, I think this exact line of thought is what's pushing a lot of AI investment right now.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#250

Post by rimbo789 »

jaccola wrote: post #90
jayd16 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some degree we already do. Corporations pay taxes. We, as a society, allow corporations to pull resources from the commons because the other side of it is that their existence provides a value through jobs and tax revenue and such. If the equation shifts such that the benefits dry up, but the downsides only increase, why should we allow that? The solution could be as simple as higher business taxes or as wild as u…

This is utterly backwards and your false statement leads to a completely wrong set of inferences. We don't let corporations do anything because they provide value through jobs and taxes. What company do you know that exists (beyond transiently) solely by paying taxes and employing people? Companies are an extension of the individual, they exist to make money for the individuals that own them so that those individuals…

Corporations don’t provide goods or services: people inside them do. Corporations are a legal structure we allow to exist because it enables jobs and taxes.

Corporations don’t have to exist; they are a creation of society and thus can - and I think obviously- should be changed

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